About Me

Gregg Walker is a Harlem Resident and 1997 graduate of Yale Law School who worked as an investment banker for 9 years and was the Vice President of Strategy and Mergers & Acquisitions at Viacom for 3 years. Gregg served as the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Sony from 2009 to 2016, and he launched his own private investing firm in July 2016 (www.gawalker.co). Gregg was chosen in 2010 by Crain's as one of NYC's 40 Under 40 Rising Stars (http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/40under40/profiles/2010/gregg-walker). Gregg is a Deacon at Abyssinian Baptist Church and served as the chairman of the Board of the Harlem YMCA. He has served on the Boards of movie studio MGM and music publishing companies Sony/ATV and EMI Music Publishing. He is also a Board member of Harlem RBI and Derek Jeter's Turn 2 Foundation. He is a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a representative of the US at the 2002 Young Leaders Conference of the American Council on Germany. Gregg is also a member of many other foundations and community organizations.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Primary Voting Tomorrow in NYC

We endorsed Cy Vance for Manhattan District Attorney last month, and we are eager to see Bill Thompson win tomorrow's primary election and take on Mayor Bloomberg in November.With Thompson's likely victory tomorrow, we can only hope that the media will be ready to end its infatuation with Mayor Bloomberg and start to hold him accountable for his administration's policies and failures.

Voting Is A Sacred Activity

As we pointed out previously, voting is a sacred activity:

It has long been a cliché to many, but it is a truth that one cannot ignore. For many of us, our ancestors died to give us the right to vote. To squander that vote or to relinquish it because of inconvenience would be obscene, whether we have faith that our individual votes will shape the outcomes of elections or not. Because the 15th Amendment (1870) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) were victories secured by the blood of our ancestors, every election day is a sacred day, and we show our respect for those who made our votes possible by going to the polls and by encouraging everyone we know to join us in that sacred activity - tomorrow and every election day of any sort.

Remember the Importance of the NYC Mayor

As we have also stated previously, Bloomberg should not be seeking a third term. He should be apologizing for his failed leadership in his second term. In NYC's system, the Mayor has far more power than all other institutions of city government combined. The NYC Mayor's power is far greater than that of all other big city mayors. So, when someone uses that power to abuse NYC's residents, that person must not be permitted to continue that abuse. As we stated in July of this year:

2) At Manhattan Viewpoint, we have been highly critical of the Mayor's decision to use sales taxes to balance the city's budget. The Mayor's obsession with protecting high earners from taxation has resulted in a painfully regressive budgetary approach that relies on poor people to pay more taxes to fill in the budget gaps created by theeconomic downturn and by the Mayor's unfortunate reliance on Wall Streetrevenues during his first 1.5 terms. It is ultra-shameful that a mayor who sothoroughly believes in regressive taxation would be so generous to his ownsenior staff during a fiscal crisis. He is demanding that poor people pay moreso that he can pay his top advisers more.

3) Bloomberg is setting a record pace for stopping and frisking people of color. He has given the crime of "walking while black" the official City Hall stamp of approval, and his administration is retaining all of the personal information of those that are stopped. 90% of those stopped are non-white even though whites who are stopped are 2.5 times more likely to have illegal substances or weapons in their possession. Yet, Bloomberg will stop and frisk more people of color this year than any mayor has ever stopped in New York City.